ruse posts

As many of us are waiting for that 5 pm bell to ring to send us off on our four day vacation, the team at Valve has also let the dogs out on its holiday game sales on the Steam PC game download service. This time there are big price cuts on four games (two are in a bundle) that you can take advantage of.

One is the recent WWII RTS game R.U.S.E. which is now on sale for $33.49, a 33 percent cut from its normal price. Next up is the non-Game of the Year edition of Borderlands. It's now available for a mere $9.99 on Steam. Finally you can get a Deus Ex-Deus Ex Invisible War bundle on Steam for the tiny price of $4.99, or $2.49 for each game in the cyberpunk-themed RPG.

Update: It looks like Steam has a lot more games on sale today only. In addition to the games mentioned above it has Prototype for $14.99,Shank for $10.04, Counter-Strike Source for $5, Alpha Protocol for $7.50 and the third "season" of Sam and Max for $10.50. There's also an indie game pack of five games (Brainpipe, Galcon Fusion, Gridrunner Revolution, ProtoGalaxy and Quantz) on sale together in a bundle for just $4.99. There are also some gift pack deals for R.U.S.E., Borderlands, Half-Life 2 and Deus Ex. Valve is also letting folks create wish lists for Steam games and will select 30 people to give their top five games to them every day until November 29.

R.U.S.E. may have not have performed up to publisher Ubisoft's sale expectations but the WWII themed RTS game is still getting some new content in the near future including the welcome addition of nuclear cannons. The game's official web site has confirmed that the "Manhattan Project Pack' will be released for free via Steam sometime in December.

The map pack contains three new maps for the Eugen Systems-developed game set in Holland, Italy and North Africa for 2v2 and 3v3 supported team battles. The pack will also have two new gameplay modes. One is called Total War where the game's time period starts in 1939 with history advancing every 10 minutes. This will cause new units and tech to be unlocked constantly. The other mode is "Nuclear War" where players will be able to build Long Tom cannons with nukes as ammon. Kaboom!

Ubisoft's latest financial report is the definition of the term "mixed". The France-based game publisher reported that revenues for the first six months of its current fiscal year (which ended on September 30) came in at 260 million euros, up 57 percent from the same period a year ago. However the company still recorded a net loss of 89.8 million euros for the time period compared to a loss of 52 million euros from the same period a year ago. Ubisoft stated it had lower than expected sales for its RTS game R.U.S.E. as well as the console version of H.A.W.X 2 (the PC version was released just a few days ago).

Ubisoft also said it took a one time 62.1 million euro charge for a reorganization of its studios which it said "resulted in the termination of certain projects". The report didn't name any specific games as being cancelled. In another part of the financial report it said there have been "team reductions" at some studios while others have seen team increases. Overall Ubisoft said it currently has 6,200 employees compared to a year ago when it had 6,400 team members

It's been a little while since we have posted up news of automatic patches of games via Steam so consider this a catch-up as a number of PC game titles that offered up patches via Valve's download service. One of the biggest is for Supreme Commander 2. Gas Powered Games' latest RTS game updated earlier this week with a big change to its economy. Before the patch you patch for units and structures when they were ordered. This new update makes you spend for units when they actually start construction. There are also a number of other changes and bug fixes in the patch.

Other PC games that have gotten bug updates via Steam include R.U.S.E., Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike Source, a truly massive patch for Victoria 2, Garry's Mod, X3 Terran Conflict, Left 4 Dead 2, Nation Red, DogFighter, and Sol Survivor.

R.U.S.E. offers a twist on the real-time strategy genre by putting the emphasis on deception and misdirection instead of building up a huge mass of units and rushing enemies. In fact, resources are often too scarce for rush tactics, especially in the campaign. So players have to rely heavily on their wits to make strong strategic decisions and overcome the odds. Unfortunately, overcoming the odds also includes working against some game design decisions.

Download the R.U.S.E. Demo (1.54 GB)
Check out all R.U.S.E. downloads

Ubisoft's tricky RTS game R.U.S.E. found itself on top of Steam's top 10 best selling PC games list (based on revenue) for the past week. In second place comes Frictional Games' first person horror adventure came Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Civilization V is moving up the ladder ahead of its September 21 release date. It came in the number three spot on Steam's list. In a bit of a surprise, the Japanese import RPG game Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale came in fourth place. The full list is below.

1. R.U.S.E. - Eugen Systems/Ubisoft
2. Amnesia: The Dark Descent - Frictional Games
3. Sid Meier's Civilization V - Firaxis Games/2K Games
4. Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale - EasyGameStation
5. Mafia II: Jimmy's Vendetta DLC - 2K Czech/2K Games
6. Battlefield Bad Company 2 - Digital Illusions/EA
7. Mafia II - 2K Czeck/2K Games
8. Blood Bowl - Cyanide Studio/Focus Home Interactive
9. Worms Reloaded - Team17
10. Company of Heroes Complete Pack - Relic/THQ

With the first full week of September now with us we begin the busiest time of the year for new PC game release. In addition to the games mentioned here, NCsoft is relaunching its MMO Aion to retail stores with a new expansion pack.

R.U.S.E. - Developer Eugen Systems and publisher Ubisoft try out something different in the RTS genre with this World War II themed game that uses things like dummy units and other features to keep his or her opponent guessing about its next move. This game is also one of the first to natively support Microsoft's Windows 7 multi-platform touch-screen features in order to control your units.

Download R.U.S.E. Demo (1.54 GB)

We think the end of the world must be getting close if Duke Nukem Forever is not only in development but playable. And that FireFall game looks pretty good too.

• Before R.U.S.E. is released next week, you might want to check out the web experience.
• Sign-ups for the BlizzCon 2010 Costume and Dance contests are now open.
• This week's Mutation gameplay mode for Left 4 Dead 2 is a repeat of the Hard Eight mode.
• Minor Steam updates for Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, Nation Red and the Mac port of Puzzle Dimension have been released.

Wow. Who ordered all the news in the past couple of days? It's like there was some huge game-related event that's happening this weekend that serves as an excuse for developers to announce new games ... oh wait.

• Steam has Cossacks: Back to War on sale for 20 percent off. You can also pre-order F1 2010 via Steam and get 10 percent off.
• Steam also has patch updates for Team Fortress 2, The Settlers 7, and Puzzle Dimension.
• Steam is letting folks pre-load R.U.S.E.
• If you are going to PAX Prime you can get some exclusive Penny Arcade A30 headsets from Astro Gaming.
• The IndieCade games festival has named its finalists for the indie games festival in October.
• Is Valve getting ready to port its games to Linux. It sure seems so.

While most trailers are content to show a little bit of gameplay footage, a cutscene, or maybe a developer interview, this RUSE trailer does something a little different. It details one of the many strategies possible with your ruses. In this case, the strategy is Divide and Conquer: launch a few offensives, with only one being the real one. The enemy divides their forces, weakening him long enough for your single attack force to wipe out his weakened defense. You can then roll in and demolish the enemy player's HQ, winning the game. It's cool to watch, although a little disorienting. It's also drastically simplified from an actual strategy, we're sure, as the end of it is accelerated and the enemy player makes no attempt to regroup.